


Interstellar

by huphilpuffs



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Moon, Outer Space, sun - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 17:55:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10496439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/huphilpuffs/pseuds/huphilpuffs
Summary: Dan always thought he was the moon. Phil Lester was definitely the sun.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning: a very brief mention of thoughts of self-harm.

Dan had always thought he was the moon.

From the moment he first curled up on his side with eyes of wonder and a mind of metaphors, staring out at a night sky with a smile made of galaxies and eyes of planets of freckles of stars. His fingers would trace patterns over his arms, draw flowers on his cheeks, swipe tears from tired eyes, and he would stare at a universe with a silent soul that seemed to reverberate in Dan’s numb one as the night dragged on.

The pain had long since rooted itself in his chest, stolen his sleep to replace oblivion with something agonizing people called life. It haunted him during the day, followed him to sleepless nights that had him too broken to cry and too whole to die, to keep him teetering on an edge he couldn’t see beyond, as razor sharp as that between being awake and being asleep.

He toed that line, did it purposefully with eyelids drooping so the sky outside blurred. So invisible smiling galaxies twisted into frowns and eyes of planets couldn’t see into the fractured thoughts circling his head. So stars turned to stripes across his vision and a smile would curl at the corners of his cheeks because even the sky could be broken if you tried hard enough to make it so.

Those had always been his favorite parts, the stars he could see and the secrets he couldn’t.

The moon had always been his least favorite part of the night sky. That’s why Dan was the moon.

He was wholly underwhelming, liked only by those who didn’t care to learn who he truly was. His light was an illusion, merely a forced reflection of the rest of the world, of people whose smiles were genuine and whose hearts beat for reasons beyond survival.

Dan was nothing, a speck in something infinitely more complex than he was. Powerless and simple, a pebble in a sea of gemstones.

A moon in a sky full of stars.

\---

Dan liked comparing other people to space, too.

There was something easier about seeing the endless sea of human beings surrounding him as something as distant as the great expanses of space. Something beautiful about the idea of floating alone in a sliver of this universe, where nobody could reach him because they were all doing the same.

And it made people more beautiful, in Dan’s eyes. Even the ones who made his heart ache and his mind sink into darkness were better when he could see them as a fragment of the abyss he stared into every night.

His parents were stars, the distant kind that glimmered faintly from afar but shone bright once you get close. The kind who warmed and would one day fuel their own slice of their galaxy. The kind he stared at to feel insignificant and safe when he couldn’t sleep at night.

His brother was an asteroid, flying through life with some semblance of an organized system that was hard to understand but impossible to ignore.

The boy who bullied him at school was a meteor, chaotic and violent but too small to truly hurt to do anything without burning himself out first.

And the girl he used to have a crush on was a comet, beautiful like blazes of blue staining the night sky. But comets’ tails could burn out, could be extinguished, and Dan thought hers might be in the process of fading.

Everyone could fit into his personal version of space. Most people he encountered did, formed a beautiful mosaic of stars and planets and asteroids and meteoroids.

His favorite part, though, was sitting in his corner of space and watching it all go by, an effortless arrangement of everything good and bad and in between that amazed every awkward and uncertain part of him.

It was being able to stare at something as flawed as humanity and feel the same reassuring awe he felt curled up on his side with gaze drifting beyond his bedroom window.

\---

Phil Lester was the sun.

Dan was sure of that from the moment the man with a northern accent and raven fringe had appeared on the screen of his laptop. That man, AmazingPhil, was definitely the sun.

Which was a strange thought, Dan would realize later that same night. He’d forced himself to end his marathon of Phil’s videos when his gaze had drifted to his window and found streaks of purple brightening the endless expanse of black. But he’d remained curled up in his bed, unable to sleep, to sink into his own darkness when his thoughts were so occupied, when something was wrong.

No one had ever been the sun before.

There’d been stars and planets and even people he’d been sure held whole galaxies in their beings. But the sun was like the earth, too amazing, too _real_ for him to think a human being could embody its greatness.

But Phil had eyes as blue as the sky and a smile that lit them up. And he was warm, even across England, even through one-sided videos.

And he made Dan feel less dark, made him think maybe the moonlight could be pretty, after all, if it was a reflection of something so beautiful.

Phil Lester was definitely the sun.

\---

The thing about the sun was that it was dangerous if you got too close.

The thing about Dan was that he was never great at doing what was best for him.

So he tried to approach the sun, too enraptured by its beauty to be satisfied with admiring it from afar. Too addicted to its warmth to let it be merely that which radiated into his darkened bedroom and wiped the darkness from his mind. That which made him radiate with light that wasn’t his but people still seemed to find brilliant.

The moon and the sun would never touch, never meet. Dan knew that, knew that even when they both appeared at the same time, they were too far apart, too different to do more than co-exist in the slice of space they shared.

Phil was the sun, the center of something wonderful, something beautiful and fascinating that Dan was a part of, but a portion too minute for Phil to ever notice.

Or so Dan thought.

At first he thought it was a perfectly directed ray of light, landing on him for a moment as he passed. But it happened again, Phil’s attention directed at him as though he was in anyway worthy. It happened and it sparked something the moon and the sun weren’t supposed to experience.

Not without the universe imploding.

The other thing about Dan was that sometimes he couldn’t bring himself to care if things could go wrong, that the darkness bathing his mind could make him indifferent to harm when that which caused it felt so _good._

The thing about Phil was that talking to him felt _really_ good.

It made Dan feel warm and bright and _happy_ , the way the sun’s rays made the moon glimmer in the night sky. He forgot how dangerous it could be, how much it could hurt, in the face of such relief from the aches in his heart and the breaks in his brain.

Phil’s eyes were just as blue when they were live on a Skype call, his smile still holding the power to spark light within them. He was warm and appealing and when Dan closed his laptop at the end of each call, he’d curl up on his bed, eyes drooping and bones tired, and stare at the sky until he fell asleep.

And he’d wonder why he ever thought the distance of space seemed so appealing.

\---

In space, distance was permanent, for the most part. The planets didn’t touch and the stars stayed far apart and that which collided only broke pieces off each other and kept going. The moon revolved around the earth and the sun stayed centered in its system and it was great.

In the real world, people weren’t good at keeping their distance. Because it became painful, a crushing weight on the heart, to have someone you cared about so deeply be so impossibly out of reach. And yet Dan was sure that in other ways it was the same.

Things that collided only broke pieces of each other and kept going.

That didn’t keep Dan from wanting to collide. Maybe it was his self-destructive nature, the part of him that had kept him considering drawing blades to his skin as though it would hurt less than existing without slices to his flesh. Maybe it was because celestial bodies didn’t have hearts or feelings.

Maybe it was because Phil was better than the sun, with his laugh that made Dan’s heart flip in his chest and eyes that made Dan think he might be both the sun and the sky.

But the why didn’t matter, not when Dan was sitting on a train staring out a window beyond which space didn’t shimmer with stars like freckles or galaxies as brilliant as the brightest of smiles. There were England’s trees and a sky that made him think of how much brighter Phil’s eyes would be in person.

It didn’t matter when the train drew to a stop and he was jerking to his feet, standing on weak knees, following a crowd into a station filled with promises of either pain or joy.

And he didn’t care anymore when he stood in that station, bag draped over his shoulder and eyes locked on the bluest pair he’d ever seen, so close to the sun he was burning, so bathed in its light that he felt _radiant._

They could be wonderful. Or they could break pieces off each other and go about their lives separately.

His mind knew that. His heart lurched against his ribs, propelled him forward. He lifted his arms just as he realized Phil was coming towards him too.

The breath escaped him when Dan when they came together, his arms wrapped around Phil’s neck, Phil’s looped around his waist, holding him close and warm.

And Dan didn’t feel the moon, not in the way he used to.

He felt like someone who was loved by the sun. Someone who could maybe, one day, deserve that love.

They weren’t broken. They would be wonderful.

\---

There were a lot of amazing things in the sky.

Some were minute, so common far away that they seemed irrelevant on this world but Dan found them beautiful. Things like the stars that dotted the night, subtle in their beauty. The asteroids that formed a belt in their solar system, invisible but there and cool in their simple way. The planets that weren’t _actually_ planets but still opened people’s eyes to the grandeur of it all.

Some were more obvious, in their rarity or their greatness, in the way they perplexed or shocked or awed people, the way they amazed Dan. Meteor showers were such a thing, rain of sparks too far away to hurt but close enough to glimmer in the eyes of all who chose to watch. So were galaxies, like when the Milky Way painted itself across the sky and people were forced to realize they were a part of it.

Dan loved them all, found something to enjoy in every piece of the puzzle that was their universe, found every reason to stare at it.

In Manchester, though, such things were mostly invisible. The city was too bright, drowning out the lights that used to ease his pain, the lights he loved too much.

But Dan didn’t miss them like he thought he would.

Because the sun was one of those amazing things, and he had his own, personal sun.

He had Phil, and so many wonderful things that came with Phil. Things more wonderful than any star or asteroid or non-planets, and even meteor showers and galaxies. He had cat whiskers drawn on cheeks and laughs that would ring through the air and make his ribs ache in the best way. Kisses that stole his breath and hugs far more comforting than the night sky ever was.

And on days when law textbooks and life came to be too much, he would go to his sun, curl up on Phil’s bed instead of his own, and stare out at a sky bright with city light, thinking of the arms wrapped around his waist instead of stars he couldn’t see.

\---

It started to come crashing down around him when he least expected it, with a glitch that messed with his heart more than the site on which it occurred. On a night where his Twitter feed was a barrage of questions and his YouTube comments matched it, and Dan’s mind was a jumble far more chaotic than either.

It burned through his chest and stung the corners of his eyes, painted misery on his cheeks and imprinted his skin with crescent moons of agony.

One moment. One glitch. One video.

He’d always known it would happen, a voice in the back of his mind that had been lost to the vacuum of space—of _love_ —but returned then, louder, clearer.

Dan was the moon, an unremarkable stone in the sky, reflecting others’ light to convince people he was something worthwhile.

Phil was the sun, a lively ball of fire casting warmth and light across the world with a smile stretching his cheeks and eyes that shone like a glimmering afternoon sky.

And the moon wasn’t destined to be with the sun, wasn’t meant to get close without burning itself. The moon and the sun were meant to be separate, peaceful in their own pieces of the universe, and that was that. They weren’t supposed to be greedy.

Weren’t supposed to fall in love.

But Dan had. He’d fallen in love with the sun and let it burn him.

Tears were streaming down his cheeks. His back ached from the way it was pressed to his bedroom door.

There wasn’t a star in the sky.

\---

Except Phil wasn’t the sun.

Dan realized it that same night, when the distance between them had grown to be too much and his Twitter mentions were far less terrifying than the idea of staying away from Phil any longer. His hands had been shaking, his head pounding, eyes long-since dry but still burning from his breakdown.

So he found himself in Phil’s bed, his boyfriend bathed in moonlight and staring at him with eyes impossible wide, gleaming with all the words they’d left unspoken.

And in that moment, Phil wasn’t the sun.

He was the moon.

But not the kind of moon Dan always thought _he_ was. Not the unremarkable stone in the sky that couldn’t produce its own light.

No, Phil was the moon as other people saw it. He was still bright, still _brilliant_ , But he wasn’t burning and energetic, he was calm, a peaceful part of a whole universe revolving around him. He was the mystery of something so _simple_ that could evoke the most beautiful of thoughts, of feelings.

Feelings like the love that inflated Dan’s lungs and made his mind feel like he was floating and his heart forget to beat.

His hand lifted from where it was tangled in his sheets, drifted across Phil’s cheek instead. Traced lines of skin as pale as the moon when it shone in the sky, staring into eyes holding as much depth as the craters on its surface.

The kiss Phil pressed to his lips was soft, not sizzling with sparks but slow, tranquil with love.

He smiled when he pulled away, features soft with the same relief that Dan felt washing over him like a moonbeam breaking through the clouds.

Phil was definitely the moon.

But if Phil was the moon, what was Dan?

\---

The night sky turned into something greater than darkness with freckles of stars and eyes of planets and a smile made of galaxies, more than a blanket draped over every broken part of him when he needed something to hold the pieces together for him.

It became a puzzle, a mystery.

Dan would stare at it from their apartment in London, the city drowning out stars more than Manchester ever had, and try to picture everything hidden within it. He’d imagine asteroids like his little brother, and stars like his parents, and try to picture himself as either.

But he was neither organized in his own unique way or a light shining dim from afar and bright when you drew closer. He wasn’t a meteor or a comet either, or he was sure he’d have burned out long ago.

Dan didn’t feel like he’d burned out.

He had, for a while, when nights were haunted with confusion and self-hatred, when the best thing that had ever happened to him was a secret locked between the mended pieces of his once broken heart. When he’d dropped out of university and when he watched something private become public, and on a night in Phil’s bed when their cheeks were damp with tears and their kisses were promises that they would overcome and the man he thought was the sun was actually the moon but just as perfect as he’d always been.

But he didn’t feel that way anymore, the exhaustion, the struggle, seeping out of him to be replaced with smiles that made his dimple pop like a crater on the moon he wasn’t, and laughs that made him feel like light was within him rather than a reflection of what others offered.

He felt alive and wonderful and like he was shining brighter than he ever had before.

But he stared up at the night sky and knew he wasn’t an invisible star or a comet or a meteor or a planet. He wasn’t the moon that shone bright over London even though the city tried to shine brighter.

Phil walked into the room then, making Dan turn from that which laid beyond his window to a smile and eyes that seemed to glow in the dark. He walked over, silent and slow, dropping onto the bed next to Dan.

An arm was draped over his shoulder and a kiss was pressed to the side of his head and Dan looked out at the sky one last time for that night.

He still didn’t know what he was.

But Phil made him feel certain it was something wonderful.

\---

Dan realized it for the first time when he was editing a gaming video. They were in the middle of a tour across the United States and the bus whirred beneath him, Phil sleeping at his side with his toes tucked under Dan’s thighs and arms curled up beneath his head. There was a whole country he’d barely seen beyond him, but it was his own face, lighting up a computer screen that had his attention.

Maybe he’d paused it at just the right moment. Maybe he’d been destined to see it since space metaphors first looped in his mind as the easiest way to understand the world.

But it was there, in that moment, alight in a series of pixels that he knew didn’t paint a complete picture, but what they made was good enough.

He was smiling, _laughing_ , eyes crinkled at the corners and shining and _bright_ . And Dan thought back to the first things he saw in Phil, the smile and the laugh that made him sure Phil could conjure his own light. The ones he’d seen before he’d seen _Phil,_ a man who blinked back his tears and covered his mouth when he laughed and whose most genuine smiles were more evident in his eyes than in the slight upturn of his lips.

But those same things were on his laptop screen. They were there. In _Dan._

And not in a version of himself he put up to show the world, not in a moment where he was projecting the happiest version of himself he could be. In a moment where Phil had said something funny and Dan and laughed and it was so simple that it could have happened in their lounge, but instead it occurred when a camera was there to witness it.

He was glad the camera was there, though. Because staring at the frame he’d paused the video on, Dan thought he might be the one thing he used to be so certain he couldn’t be.

Dan thought _he_ might be the sun.

\---

There was a line in one of his favorite songs.

It went like this: _When the moon fell in love with the sun, all was golden in the sky._

And Dan had always loved it. Because he was the moon and Phil was the sun and his life was the most golden it had ever been. He loved it because he could relate, could feel the words echoing in his chest, reverberating with every ounce of love in every beat of his heart.

He’d been the moon who’d fallen in love with the sun.

Except he wasn’t. Because Phil was the moon,

But the song stayed with him, through the years when he felt whatever good parts of him had burned away, through the months he’d spent staring at the sky trying to solve a puzzle without being able to see all its pieces. Its notes had still calmed his mind and warmed his heart, still made him turn to Phil with his eyes crinkling at the corners and a smile curling at the corners of his lips.

It stayed with him through a tour, played over his headphones like a soothing piece of something from home as Phil cuddled his pillow and Dan cuddled Phil.

It came home with him.

Now Dan lies in the bed he shares with Phil, the curtains still drawn open because neither of them are asleep. The sky outside is bright not with stars, but with London lights, and his heart is warmed not with the knowledge that humanity can exist in a series a of space metaphors, but with the knowledge that he’s loved and in love.

Phil reaches over, fingers tripping over Dan’s jaw and drawing him closer, making them face each other. He’s bathed in city light that makes his skin glow like the moon and his eyes shine with every bit of depth Dan adores and his smile shines in that way that makes Dan feel like his heart could burst from his chest.

He’s the moon.

And Dan feels himself radiating light he’s stopped trying to hide, feels warmth coming from somewhere deep within instead of being projected upon him. He feels like the center of something great, something alive with energy and burning with love and so much brighter than he ever thought he could be.

He’s the sun.

He’s the sun that fell in love with the moon, years ago now.

There’s suits as golden as the sky they create in the closet just a few feet away. There’s a whole word they created, anchoring them both and anchored to them, stretching far beyond the walls of their flat. There’s a city below them filled with people who are stars and asteroids and meteors and comets.

Dan has freckles of stars on his cheeks.

Phil has eyes like planets.

And when Dan leans forward to press their smiles together, galaxies erupt between their lips.


End file.
